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So very Kunsthaus!
Dear Members of the Zürich Kunstgesellschaft,
Soon it will be time! That is, time for the opening of the Picasso exhibition. Or rather: time for the re-opening of the Picasso exhibition! To celebrate the centenary of the Kunsthaus, which opened its doors to the public one hundred years ago, we offer you a special gift. A unique selection of oeuvres by Pablo Picasso, first presented in Zurich in the fairly young Kunsthaus in 1932, will be on view again – the show was a sensational and the first ever museum-exhibit of the artist.
But it had all started out quite differently: Wilhelm Wartmann, the first director of the Kunsthaus had pursued the suggestion of the art collector Emil Friedrich-Jezler and had envisioned a show of the three big modernists: Braque, Léger and Picasso. The painter Carl Montag, a resident of Paris, was to be the liaison between Zurich and Paris, as he had already been for the Bonnard-Vuillard exhibit in 1932. The catalogue will allow you to follow in detail how Wartmann and the Kunsthaus successfully outbid the Museum of Modern Art of New York and the Kunsthalle Basel by agreeing to take on and bring to Zürich an expanded version of the retrospective curated by Picasso himself and his dealers Rosenberg and Wildenstein in the Parisian Galeries Georges Petit. The show was supposed to last only four weeks, but was extended to six, and attracted 34’000 visitors – which today sounds like few but which then, and not just to Director Wilhelm Warmann’s thinking, was sensational!
If we look back at what has been going on since then with some regularity in the Kunsthaus we could say: So very Kunsthaus! A good balance between circumspection and courage, solid appeal and international flair, discretion, patience and the ability to act quickly, and a pronounced interest for contemporary art. And last but not least from the beginning on a public that follows our work in an open and critical way. What more could one wish for a museum? On its 100th birthday the Kunsthaus Zürich can therefore look ahead with its friends and followers at a good future 100 years, and more imminently at very varied programming for the fall and the next year: an exhibition on the giant plants and monster trees by a certain Carl Wilhelm Kolbe or a show of works by the deservedly highly-acclaimed architect of the Kunsthaus Zürich, Karl Moser, who created many still now very visible buildings in Zürich. And, oh yes, there will be animals too, though not quite right away…. More than just one reason to visit the Kunsthaus. Just as a hundred years ago we’ll open the door and welcome you!
Yours,
Christoph Becker
